A Girl Walks into a Hotel
by AutumnAgain
Summary: Pretty much what it sounds like. Quasi-AU pseudo-sequel to "The Girl Who Heard Angels". (Note: Michael is the older brother kid from "Something Wicked". He wasn't on the character list, thus he remains untagged.)


***I own nothing but the situation and dialogue***

Michael was about to close the check-in desk and go to bed when a girl dashed into the lobby, panting. When she took off her motorcycle helmet her blonde hair was tangled and dirty. There were bags under her eyes, as though she hadn't slept in days, and her only luggage was a worn old backpack. She looked about the same age as Asher, and Michael immediately assumed that she was a runaway.

"Can I check in?" she asked. "I know it's late, but I really need a place to crash. I have money." She held out a wad of bills plaintively.

"Do your parents know where you are?" Michael asked, as he handed her the guest register. She shook her head, hard.

"It's not like that. Mom's great. I haven't seen Dad in years, I'm not – _Christo!"_ she cursed, as the pen slipped from her fingers to fall behind the desk. Michael could have sworn that she glanced at his eyes, as if searching for something, as he bent down to retrieve it.

"So, then, what brings you to a place like this, this late at night, alone?"

"It doesn't matter," she snapped. "Can I get a room or not?" He handed her the keys to a room near his own, just in case. After paying – for a single night - she walked off as quickly as a sleep-deprived teenage girl could. Looking down at the register, Michael noticed that she had only signed her first name – Claire.

Michael had finished packing up and was heading for his room when he heard a loud crash from Claire's room. "Is everything okay?" he asked, banging on the door. He was answered by a dull thud and a high-pitched whine that made him want to clamp his hands over his ears.

"I told you no!" Claire yelled from inside. "Do I have to refuse every single one of you individually before you get the message? No!" The whine increased in volume. Michael fumbled with his key, but even once the door was unlocked it wouldn't open.

"I don't care! I'm not him, and anyway he wouldn't do that!" Through the door, Claire's yells were hoarse and ragged.

"You think that that will persuade me? At least there she'll be out of your reach- oof!" There was another thud, which Michael assumed was caused by Claire being flung against the wall. She continued taunting her unknown attacker.

"Don't like being reminded? Too bad! You probably deserved it! Even Lucifer was more polite than you bullies! You bastards are worse than demons! At least they keep their promises, and don't try to cheat the rules!" Through the whine, Michael heard a wet smack and then silence. The door finally opened, whatever had been holding it shut banished. He burst in.

Claire was leaning against a wall, forearm bleeding, hand resting on a sigil that seemed to have been drawn in her own blood. A long silver blade was tied to her wrist. The window was shattered, and the curtains fluttered in the nighttime breeze. Broken glass littered the floor. Several odd symbols were written on hotel stationary and pinned to the walls; another sat unfinished on the desk.

"I'm sorry about the mess," the girl said, breaking the silence. "I couldn't get the symbols up fast enough. They have to be written fresh- tied to the location- in order to work right, and I was so tired. I was too slow and they found me. I'll pay for the window, and I can clean up, I promise! Please don't call the police on me." She looked so desperate, and Michael remembered the time Asher had been in trouble, and he would have done anything to save him.

He had a hundred questions, but what he asked was: "Who are you trying to protect?"

She smiled dryly. Her lip was bleeding and her whole body was starting to bruise, but she didn't seem to care. "My mom."

Michael waited for the rest of the story. "Dad left, years ago, without even saying goodbye, or explaining anything." Claire paused, thinking. "Wait… that's not true. He explained what was happening, we just didn't believe him. It's not like he was making any sense.

"He came back, a year later, begging for forgiveness. He promised that he would stay, and everything would be like it was. My dad was always religious, but he refused to pray that night." She sighed and slid a bit farther down the wall. Michael wondered if he should try to help her, but he knew nothing about medicine, and he hadn't trusted hospitals or doctors since the _strega_. Besides, Claire was ignoring her injuries, and she seemed to know what she was doing. He decided to let her keep talking.

"Things went bad. Like, really bad. Like, 'the neighbors are possessed and now they're dead but mom's possessed and I've been kidnapped and now I'm chained to an angel and there's a guy drinking blood and Dad is begging the thing that has me to take him instead and he's never coming home again because if he does they'll come for us again,' bad. He was wrong, of course."

"Wrong?" Michael asked. He wasn't quite sure who Claire was referring to, but he was afraid that she would clam up if he asked the wrong question, so he followed her prompts.

"Dad. Castiel too, I suppose. They said if they left, we would be safe." She gestured around the broken motel room. "It's not their fault, of course. They couldn't have known what would happen."

"What happened?"

"Metatron." She said the name the same way Draco Malfoy said 'mudbloods' in the _Harry Potter_ movies. "Metatron happened."

"Wasn't that the name of an angel in _Dogma_?" Michael asked. He didn't have much to do when business was slow beyond watch movie reruns on the old television in the lobby.

Claire nodded. "The scribe of God. Also the annoying prick who refused to postpone the apocalypse in _Good Omens_, also the asshole behind most of the bad stuff happening in _The Golden Compass_, also the revenge-driven bastard who kicked all the other angels out of Heaven so they could wander around Earth causing more trouble than you can imagine."

"What was that last one from?" he asked, although suspicions had already formed.

"About six weeks ago," she said, eyes challenging him to question her claim. He chose a safer query.

"Why are angels after you, then? What's so special about you in particular that they're keeping you from your mother and tracking you down in random motel rooms in the middle of the night?" He was taking this way more calmly than he thought he probably should be. Still, he'd had years to adjust to the reality of the supernatural, and angels being assholes explained quite a bit about the state of the planet.

"They need vessels," Claire explained. "To walk the earth properly, they need to possess a human, or they're just annoyingly destructive waves of energy. Problem is, only people from certain bloodlines can serve as vessels without breaking down, and they need to give their permission to be possessed."

"You're from one of those families?"

She smiled again, sardonically. "My family is very strong. It took eating the entire population of Purgatory to break my dad, and he still recovered. It doesn't hurt that God seems to have a soft spot for Castiel. He's already died… four times? Anyway, I wasn't in trouble a few years ago, when most of the angels were in Heaven, but now…"

"They all need vessels," Michael realized, ignoring the phrase "entire population of Purgatory" and the fact that someone had died four times for the time being. "Basic supply and demand. When there were only a few angels, if someone refused, they could just possess someone else. Now they have to bully in everyone they can."

Claire tapped her nose with the pointer finger of her now-scabbed-over arm. "Bingo. It doesn't help that Castiel – the angel possessing my dad – is pretty much Heaven's Most Wanted at the moment. He didn't mean to, but the fact that the angels fell is kind of his fault. Plus, he was the one who started the Civil War after the Winchesters stopped the apocalypse a few years ago."

"So, possessing you would be a way for them to hurt Castiel," he said slowly.

"Remind him of another way he failed, yeah. Believe me, I know. Angels are a lot of things, but they sure as Hell aren't nice. They don't care about casualties, as long as they get what they want. Honestly?" she leaned in conspiratorially. "Sometimes I think they're worse than demons. At least Hell's people are up front about being evil."

"So demons are real, too?" He wasn't sure why that surprised him. It made sense, after all. "Are they after you, too?"

Claire groaned and sat up a little straighter. "Oh, yeah. They're after me. My dad had the bad luck to get possessed by the one angel who managed to make enemies in four separate dimensions." She started ticking them off on her fingers. "Heaven's mad because of the failed apocalypse, the war, and the fall. Hell's mad because he double-crossed their king, and he's killed quite a few demons personally. Purgatory's mad because of Eve, and the fact that he ate all of them once." She waved off his confused expression. "I hear this stuff third-hand from ghosts and people trying to kill me. All I know is, it was a thing."

"That was only three dimensions," Michael pointed out.

"Yeah. He's kind of wanted for mass murder. I'm not really sure what happened there." She tried to shrug, but winced instead.

"Are you okay?" he asked, mentally cursing himself for not asking that first, before listening to her life story.

"I've had worse. I used to summon demons in the basement to practice fighting, until Mom found out. It's pretty good exercise, if you know how to hide the bruises the next day." He stared at her, but found no sign of a joke.

"God, I'm such an egotist," she declared suddenly. "Here I am, spilling my guts to you, and I never even asked you for your name."

"It's Michael," he told her, unsure of her reaction. "Like the archangel."

Claire Novak laughed.


End file.
